The petty politics of Jeremy Clarkson’s farm

Clipboard in hand, shoulders hunched in defeat and peering incredulously through glasses perched on the end of his nose, Jeremy Clarkson didn’t try too hard to disguise his contempt for the councillors of West Oxfordshire District Council’s planning committee.

This week, the committee voted against Clarkson’s plans to build a new 50-cover restaurant and 70-place car park on his Diddly Squat farm near Chadlington, Oxfordshire. Before jumping into his Range Rover outside the hearing, the 61-year-old Clarkson described the decision as “a bad day for British farming”, and compared one of the council officials to Eric Morecambe, “but not as funny”.

Of course, Clarkson’s bid is a rather naked attempt to capitalise on the huge popularity of his Amazon series about life on Diddly Squat, which has already led to queues snaking out of his farm shop and villagers complaining of traffic chaos. Equally, with a second series on the way, he may well have pushed the planning proposal to convert a recently built lambing shed into a restaurant in what is a designated area of outstanding natural beauty with one eye on developing a storyline out of the fallout.

But this is also a story that will resonate among farmers across the country who have found similar attempts to expand their businesses thwarted by planners, leaving them thousands of pounds out of pocket and tearing their hair out at layers of bureaucracy so dense, it would stop a combine harvester in its tracks.

With it becoming increasingly difficult to turn a profit by farming the land, the national planning policy framework – which sets out the Government’s planning policies for England – explicitly states that farmers should be encouraged to diversify their businesses, as long as it is in keeping with the surrounding landscape. And yet in spite of this guidance, many are discovering that, on a local level, they are consistently being refused any new applications due to a combination of red tape and nimbyism, which has left many farmers caught between a rock and a hard place. Or, to put it another way, earning diddly squat.

Paul Edwards has recently suffered a similar experience at the hands of local authority planners. The 52-year-old is the third generation of his family to farm the land at Ynyshir Farm in Flintshire, North Wales, although following the death of his father he has been forced to sell off land and diversify the business in order to make ends meet. He has installed an eight-acre campsite and built a holiday cottage which now provides his primary source of income – although both were initially refused by planners and only permitted after he had appealed. Then last month, he had a proposal to extend the site by building 17 luxury lodges rejected, amid concerns of overdevelopment.

Edwards says he had already received planning approval for five of the lodges, and in an informal meeting with the council been given an indication that the development of the cedar and shingle roof lodges would be accepted. “But when we put it in to the local council, they turned on us like a pack of dogs,” he says. “We are trying to make a success of it, but we’ve been hampered all the way by the local council.”

Edwards is now preparing an appeal that will add to the more than “several thousand pounds” he has already spent on an application. “It has just been an exhausting process,” he says.

Similar stories dot the British countryside like gambolling lambs in spring. According to the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), planning applications have consistently hindered rural businesses with what it describes as “lengthy waiting times, high risk and staggering upfront costs”.

During one particularly bureaucratic struggle of Jarndyce proportions, a CLA member spent 20 years aiming to receive planning permission to convert listed farm buildings into commercial office space. Another member’s application for the redevelopment of a site in a market town required £1 million in upfront costs for supporting evidence, and was ultimately refused. 

In 2015, one Oxfordshire farmer reportedly grew so infuriated after losing a planning dispute that he torched the offices of South Oxfordshire District Council, along with several other buildings.

Farmer and writer Jamie Blackett, who presides over 1,250 acres of arable and dairy land in the Scottish borders, has been similarly knocked back with planning applications. About a decade or so ago, he received planning permission to build four properties on the outskirts of a village in Dumfries and Galloway. But when he lodged another bid to build a further four homes nearby a few years later, he was rejected following objections from the very out-of-towners who had moved into the earlier development. “They expected the countryside to be preserved in aspic,” he says.

He describes Clarkson as something of a “hero” for shedding light on the red tape farmers are forced to wade through. “As far as councillors and civil servants in councils are concerned, it is always so much easier just to say no,” he says.

He also questions whether the stringent policies that have followed the imposition of the Town and Country Planning Act in 1947 have been of benefit to the countryside.

“When I look around at all the beautiful houses built before 1947, and the architecture of houses built since, it is very hard to conclude that the planning laws have actually enhanced the landscape,” he argues. “If anything, I would say it is the reverse.”

According to Guy French, a planning consultant with Essex-based firm Foxes Rural, which specialises in assisting farmers with bids to diversify their businesses, the problem lies with a “negative stance” entrenched in local authorities.

Often farmers are required to carry out expensive surveys covering noise, ecology, contamination and highways prior to even submitting a bid – the potential potholes awaiting any application are multitudinous.

For Suffolk farmer Andrew Blenkiron, it was great crested newts that scuppered him – four of them, in fact – which, along with the discovery of an 18th-century brick kiln, ended up adding around £120,000 to the cost of the water storage reservoir he built in 2016.

The 57-year-old Blenkiron, who works as estate director on the Euston Estate which is owned by the Duke of Grafton, wanted to build the reservoir to help bolster the resilience of the land to climate change, but following the discovery of the newts was quickly plunged into years of delay.

“These things can seem quite ludicrous in terms of delay and real cost and thwarting development,” he says. “It needs a bit more of a balanced approach.”

One 51-year-old poultry farmer in east Suffolk recently had a proposal to convert some old chicken sheds into industrial units to rent to local tradesman rejected on the basis it “didn’t meet the planning policies for the area”. “We don’t have the time or resources for a long, drawn-out planning appeal, and the risk of losing the planning fee if the application is turned down may prevent farmers from trying to diversify at all,” he says. “It’s very frustrating.”

According to Guy French, as well as a greater degree of flexibility among planning officers, there also needs to be more consistency across the country. He says the whims of a local authority mean some applications can be rejected out of hand in some areas, while they will sail through elsewhere.

“Quite often, there is a misinterpretation of rural policy from local planning authorities,” he says. “It is not a level playing field.” 

Even those with the clout of the Amazon-streamed Farmer Clarkson are discovering that to their peril.